Political Notes: Like his 2008 blimp, Ron Paul keeps wafting along above it all

Sunday

Feb 5, 2012 at 12:38 AM

Larry Peterson

Another week, another Republican presidential contest.

Ron Paul stays on course, no matter what the result.

In contrast, one never knows from week to week whether Newt Gingrich will soar or crash.

Paul is different.

The Texas congressman likely knows he won’t be the nominee.

Never mind CNN polls finding he runs nearly as well against President Barack Obama as GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney.

I recently said Paul and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman had only slightly more chance of being Obama’s fall foe than either of my cats.

Having dropped out, Huntsman may have less. But Paul seems oblivious to the obvious: His ideas have appeal — but mostly outside the GOP — and repel conservatives most likely to vote in the party’s primaries.

He’s crusading for, as he puts it, “liberty,” and the Constitution — as he reads it.

As he inveighs in his reedy, sometimes whiny voice, he seems one part Benjamin Spock — a fellow doctor and isolationist — and one part George McGovern.

But you have to admire his gumption.

In a South Carolina debate, people booed his answers on foreign policy; Texas Gov. Rick Perry wanted a gong to cut Paul off.

Yet Paul can make sense — even to Republicans. That is, until they hear specifics such as legalizing smack, ending income taxes, indifference to Iranian nukes and regrets that Obama took out Bin Laden.

Some analysts say Paul might wow us if he used a sort of verbal ju jitsu on foreign policy questions to pound home his economic views.

Sometimes he does. But he often seems unable to help himself and does just the opposite, turning a query on domestic policy into a call to bring home the troops or lighten up on Iran. He almost echoes 1972 Democratic nominee McGovern’s mantra: “Come home, America.”

That may sound squishy to conservative hardliners, but it doesn’t mean Paul’s above hardball politics. His TV ads tear into opponents with gusto, and he insists it’s “quite proper” to hammer a voting record.

“I had only one problem,” he said concerning one commercial that lit into former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. “I couldn’t get all the things I wanted in one minute that I should have.”

But his judgment can appear to be — at best — naive.

Take, for example, newsletters that bore his name and were replete with gay bashing, racially insensitive rants and ruminations about One World conspiracies.

Paul insists he neither wrote nor approved such stuff and rejects it. Yet it took him until the newsletters became an issue to say so.

Indeed, the conspiracy stuff makes him sound like he’s also one part Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society. You know, the guy who figured Dwight Eisenhower was a Commie, or at least pink around the edges.

Paul says the Birchers “understand the Constitution.”

Think former U.S. House speaker Gingrich has baggage that could hurt other GOP candidates? Sure he does, but compared to Paul’s, his is more like carry on.

In any case, one wonders — given that he won’t be the Republican standard bearer — what’s next?

He won’t quite rule out a bid as an independent or third-party candidate.

Perhaps, as commentator Kevin Williamson suggests, this is the 76-year old’s “last crusade.” Maybe, as others say, he’s something of a John the Baptist figure, preparing the way for his son, Libertarian-leaning Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

But for now, he’ll likely waft from primary to primary, like the blimp that was his most visible 2008 campaign presence in Georgia.

Above it all.

Senior reporter Larry Peterson covers politics for the Savannah Morning News. He can be reached at 912-652-0367 or at larry.peterson@savannahnow.com.